Sedition Charges Slapped on Manipur Congress Politician Who Called Home Minister 'Bearded Monkey'

The politician was detained after he slammed the Home Minister's suggestion that Hindi be made compulsory for students until the 10th grade. According to the 2011 Census, Hindi is the mother tongue of 44% of Indians, who live mostly in its north, central and western states. However, 120 other languages are spoken in the country, including tribal.

A Congress politician in India's northeastern state of Manipur was arrested under sedition charges for calling federal Home Minister Amit Shah a "bearded monkey" during a television debate, Imphal Times reported.

Sanoujam Shyamcharan Singh was held on Tuesday after he criticised Home Minister Shah for recently suggesting that the Hindi language be made compulsory for students until the 10th grade in schools in the northeastern states.

Singh reportedly also said the federal Home Minister, who is a Bharatiya Janata Party politician, doesn't know which community he actually belongs to.

The Congress politician's arrest was made after a complaint was filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) youth wing member M. Barish Sharma, who stated: "The accused (Singh) deliberately humiliated and belittled the Hindus of mainland India by terming them as animals."

Singh, however, was granted bail the same day.

Last week, Home Minister Amit Shah said that the Hindi language should be made compulsory in all eight northeastern states up to the 10th grade in schools.

He described Hindi as "the language of India" and said that citizens from different states should use it to communicate with each other.

Political Parties in States Oppose Home Minister's Remark on Hindi

Not just opposition politicians criticised Shah, but some BJP politicians belonging to non-Hindi states voiced discontent with the senior leader's remark.

Former Karnataka state chief and Congress leader Siddaramaiah said, "Hindi is not our national language, we will never let it be".

"History suggests that any attempt to impose Hindi in other States has not gone well," Siddaramaiah said. "We take pride in Kannada identity and we believe that Karnataka, as our poet Laureate Kuvempu said, is the daughter of Bharata (India)."

An India Today report cited Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh as saying that he objects to "the imposition of Hindi".

"We respect Hindi, but we are opposing the imposition of Hindi," Ghosh stated.

Shiv Sena politician Manisha Kayande said there is an "agenda to make regional languages lose their value".

The chief of BJP's Tamil Nadu state unit K. Annamalai has also said that they will not allow the imposition of Hindi on the state, reported The Indian Express.

"If we require it for work, education or other purposes, we can learn Hindi. But it cannot be imposed," Annamalai said in a press conference.

India does not have one national language, rather it has Hindi and English as official languages used by the federal government. Additionally, the country has 22 scheduled languages used in different states --- Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.

Many state government schools teach their state language, such as Tamil, Telugu, Assamese, Bengali, etc, where most of the time, Hindi is an elective language.